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Tripod for Toyo 45c

Hello,

I'm new to large format Photography and currently live in South Africa. ( Moved there from Germany.)
I bought myseld a Toyo 45c and a Schneider 121mm Super Angulon lens. Now I need a tripod for the camera and I don't have to much money to spend on it. There is no ebay in South Africa but I found an interesting offering at a local classifieds website.

Its a Manfrotto 055B with Ball Head ( not sure which exactly) here is the link to the classfield:

Re: Tripod for Toyo 45c

I looked it up on the internet. What I found was that the tripod supports 13 lbs. I didn't find what the head supports. Your camera weighs 9 lbs. After adding a lens and factoring in the tripod head weight you would really be pushing it especially with the Schneider 121mm lens. I own the same lens and it is not extremely light.

I would look for a different tripod. You got to remember that when you rack out your bellows with a heavy lens you really need good support. This tripod is very borderline with your set up. If you are going to the trouble to shoot large format then you really need a quality base to mount your camera on.

Now for my personal opinion, I would not want to use a ball head with a monorail. A pan/tilt head is so much easier to use with a heavy camera.

Re: Tripod for Toyo 45c

I have a Toyo 45c and manfrotto 055 legs, but with a much sturdier gitzo pan and tilt head. It's OK for what I do, which is mainly portraiture, no long exposures or anything like that. I use it because I already owned it when I bought the camera, if I had to buy a tripod especially for the camera I'd probably go for something heavier.

Re: Tripod for Toyo 45c

The 141 is the older style three-way head, a very good product for heavy cameras.
The 075 tripod is again the older version of the current 475 so a safe bet for handling view cameras.
I would say, based on personal experience with similar Manfrotto gear, it would be a nice, steady,
set up for a monorail camera.

(Unless you plan on doing a lot of field shoots, of course, in which case
you should look into different stuff - carbon fibre maybe - but then again
not a monorail camera either